Category Archives: Uncategorized

Get a Website Quote

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When it is time to get a new website or refresh your existing site, your starting place is the quote. Ideally you would ask for 3 quotes and be able to compare apples for apples… hosting, domain name and development costs all itemised.

Before enquiring however, it pays to sit down and think through how your website needs to change or what content you need on a new site.

Giving the addresses of sites you like is a great way to communicate the kind of look and functions you require and can be a big time saver.

Here are some important questions my might consider asking a prospective supplier during the quotation process:

  • Will I be able to edit my own website? In other words, will there be a content management system (CMS) for my site. If there isn’t then that commits you to returning to your web design for future edits which they will invoice for. I would also be good to know if training or orientation is provided in the CMS. If not, there may be a very step learning curve.
    My company uses the open source WordPress CMS to make new websites. We offer training by screen share in Skype and have http://www.how-to-wordpress.info as an additional resource.
  • What are the backup arrangements for my website? Most hosts say the have a nightly back up in place, but if you press them for this, they will not be able to produce it. This is especially important for database driven website (most web sites now) as they are not stored and edited locally, but are always live on the server. Its best to get a back up facility built into your website at the time it is made. My company makes two back ups a week and sends them to Dropbox so they can be shard quickly with the owner of the site.
  • Who has copyright over my website? This is an important question and one that is seldom addressed during the pre-purchase phase. And its a vexed question as there are three parties involve: you, the web designer and normally a software provider like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. You can try to claim copyright over the website in its entirety, but this probably wouldn’t stand up. For example, the engine of your site will be an open-source CMS – well, you can use that software for free, but you don’t own it (you can however download an instance of it at any time should you need the files). Its safest maybe to make it clear that your claim copyright over anything you write and and pictures you supply, but leave it there.
  • Does the price include marketing on Google? This service is called “search engine optimisation” or SEO and is a specialist’s area. Most web design form will outsource this to a partner. so, mostly the answer to this will be “no”, this is because it costs more than a website to set up and it is a distinct and ongoing service, so probably billed separately.
  • Will I be able to move my site to another supplier easily? This is very important, and many services like Wix and Fairfax Media’s offerings can not be moved – they need to be migrating a page at time – cut and paste. This is costly and unnecessary. Conversely, a website in a CMS like WordPress can be moved easily. All the page content can be exported as an XML file, or a SQL database can be imported into a new instance of WordPress, or a CPanel to Cpanel back up can be made. So there are many option PROVIDED you start with a the right software. It would also pay to get clear about termination arrangements – how and how much notice do you need to give if you want to move.
  • Ask the web designer “What do you require from me to make a website?” You need to be clear that building a web site is a collaboration between you and your chosen web design company. If you are organised and clear, the project will go smoothly. If you drip feed content it will drag the time frame out and inputs and directions from you will be mislaid. Typically you will be required to write the text for your site, provide a logo and photography. If you don’t have these on hand and want the web designers to produce these items, then you need to specify that from the outset.
  • How long will it take to make my website? Get the web design firm to say when they can start on your project. You don’t want to find out that they can’t deliver within the next month three months after you paid your deposit! But remember, if you drip feed inputs, you will slow the whole process down, so you have to hold up your end.

I hope this article was a useful primer to someone about to start the process of requesting a quote for a web site.

How much does a web site cost?

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The cost of a web site very much depends on…

  1. the website’s function i.e. what it has to do – is it a brochure site, photography site, a blog or e-commerce website? They are all very different.
  2. how much involvement you have in creating materials for the site: the text, photos and logo. We call these “inputs“.
  3. how long it takes you to deliver these inputs if you don’t deliver them all upfront after accepting the Xero quote.

Every web site is different and so are quoted individually. Efforts to make your project fit within predetermined “bronze, silver or gold packages” seldom works for the client or developer.

What is in a website quote?

A website quote can be comprised of the following line items…

  1. domain name registration (usually quoted annually)
  2. website and email hosting (some quotes/offers exclude email, so watch that. e.g. Wix sites)
  3. website development (this is where the rubber meets the road)
  4. photography & copyrighting (when required)
  5. search engine optimisation or SEO (this can be more than all the above put together!)

Also, there is a propensity for the website owner to add more content and functions as the website is being built. This new, unspecified work can be billed for separately.

How to save big bucks on your website

You will need to supply text and pictures for your site

Ideally you would sit down and make a list of all the pages (and products) you want on your web site. You can start authoring your web site’s text. You would gather all the photography you want on the site in Dropbox so you can just send a link to the images.

If you want an e-commerce website, collecting product data in a single spreadsheet that can be imported into the web site is going to be a big time saver, and therefore money saver. Ask you web developer for a “comma separate values” or CSV file that you can do data entry in. If you do this you will save hundreds and even thousands.

The Dream Client

While you gather quotes and find the best fit for the company to make your website, you can be the ideal “dream client” by:

  • having a clear brief – being able to say plainly what you want
  • writing compelling text for your site and having this ready before your web designer starts
  • have great photography on hand, supplied in Dropbox
  • giving the addresses of web sites you like as examples of what you have in mind
  • if some does not go as you expected, communicate that calmly taking an inquisitive approach and not a blaming or aggressive approach

Read the T & Cs

It pays to note the terms and conditions on your quote carefully. It will specify payment terms, who owns what and what will happen in the event of a failure. Read more about getting a quote here.

Mobile Friendly Design

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You may have heard the term “mobile friendly” and like so many IT buzz words, be a little unclear on what it means exactly.

Mobile friendly design or tablet friendly design is web design that resizes or re-fortmats in real time depending on the display size or type. By “real time” I mean no screen refresh – the browser does not go back to the web server for new files or a different, cut-down version of your site. That was the design communities first attempt at making mobile friendly design. We have moved on.

“Responsive” design or mobile friendly design is preferenced by Google

So, for example, a mobile friendly design will shrink and expand depending on whether the site is loaded on a very large desktop screen, a smaller laptop screen and then a tablet and mobile phone.

The mobile friendly aspect of the site is controlled by computer code called CSS, or cascading style sheet. The style sheet will reformat the site depending on the available screen space, but it also makes other changes like: collapsing the the navigation into a tumbler, then the navigation flies out, normally to the left, so the user can see all the navigation items.

Typically to, items like banners are either made smaller or dispensed with completely. Sidebar content become stacked in two or one column. Mobile friendly web sites reduce the need for two-fingered zooming and pinching which is almost always mandatory on a non-mobile friendly site being viewed on a smart phone.

Mobile friendly websites came about to accommodate smaller screen sizes and particularly are aimed at overcoming an important usability issue for phones – the pointing device is your finger, and compared to a mouse pointer, it is very low resolution – literally a blunt tool.

Its worth noting that some mobile friendly design looks sparse on a desktop. Mobile friendly design sometimes creates more white space on larger screens. Some people prefer this, but its not what every one likes.

Handling navigation differently is important for smaller devices. You will certainly have had the experience of using a non-mobile friendly site… trying to activate a link with the finger touch and getting the link next door or underneath. This is a classic usability issue with non mobile friendly sites.

Google has a mobile friendly testing tool at https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly. There are other useful tools to see how different mobile phones display your site such as http://www.mobilephoneemulator.com.

The consequences for not having a mobile friendly website are mild at the time of writing, but likely to be much more important in the future. Most websites I manage have a mobile and tablet viewership of about 7-15%. The rest are laptop or desktop visitors using a larger screen and mouse. So that means up to 15% of visitor may struggle to navigate your website and the breadth of its content may be difficult for them to access.

However, it should be noted, that many site visits are just to get a phone number, location map or send an email, and many of these functions can be put up front on a site without the need to click away from the homepage.

Also, Google presently preferences mobile friendly websites on its mobile search platform, NOT all it search platforms, and typically that preference will likely only be a position or two higher on the search results pages compared to the desktop search.

In summary, if you are having a website made or design refreshed, you may as well build mobile friendly design into it. Although not critical, it will increase the number of people able to access your content and make it easier for them to interact with your site.

Getting the most from your Auckland Web Designer

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When people call to discuss a web site, one of their concerns is design. Sometimes people have firm ideas about a design approach and sometimes they prefer to be lead. Resoundingly though, people ask for “clean”, “plain” design often on a simple white background. They complain about “clutter” and say it hard to get to the basic information on a web site or that its hard to navigate on a phone or tablet. Here are some design issues to consider…

Does your web design work on all platforms – desktop, mobile and tablet?

This is called “responsive design” and it simply means that the web site reformats to suit the device it is being displayed on. It does this without going back to the server to get a duplicate, mobile version of the site.  Google will make your site come up higher on the mobile search results pages if your site is responsive. There is a test here provided by Google so you can see if your site is mobile search friendly.

Does your web design respect your band or undermine it?

You may have invested thousands in your brand on signage, car wraps and business livery. The last thing your Auckland web designer should do is alter or vary your brand in some way. Your online and offline marketing should build on each other, and not fight each other.

Is there too much going on, on your homepage?

Clutter. Its a problem. Visitors load your homepage but don’t know where to look. Most news websites suffer from this problem. If you have a lot to offer and you want your homepage to reveal all your services and products, you run the risk of confusing people. Your homepage web design should focus your visitors on your high value products where most of your money is made. Try not to distract people with banners and widgets the flick on and off.

Does your Auckland web design have a clear call to action?

Have you ever had to search through a web site for a phone number? Its annoying and frustrating. Make sure your web design features your call to action prominently e.g “call this number” or “complete this form/survey”. In short, does your web site make it clear what you want people to do and when. Spell it out.

“I don’t want any text on my homepage!”

From a design point of view, having a homepage comprised of graphics alone sometimes appeals to a web site owner, but avoid this at all costs as doing so will make your site less attractive to Google. Also, text loads faster than graphics and normally says more. In this instance your are choosing between form and function: graphic intensive design (form) versus search engine visibility (function).

Photography will make or break your web design

The difference a professional Photographer can make

The difference a professional Photographer can make: the inset was supplied by the web site owner, who subsequently had a Photographer retake all the images.

Rubbish in, rubbish out: if you provide bleary, vertical mobile phone pictures to your Auckland web designer, you can’t expect them to return a top shelf, classy web site. Photography is the difference between a web site that is unmemorable and one that really pops.

In summary, in terms of web design, less is more. Web site owners prefer “clean”, “plain” and uncluttered web designs that load quickly on all platforms. Click through your competitor’s web sites, how does theirs compare to yours?

Building Quality Backlinks

Posted on by Posted in How Tos, Optimisation, Uncategorized

To do well on Google.co.nz you will have to get inbound links from quality web sites. By quality I mean sites with high Google Page Rank™ (you can check a site’s PR here).

These links are often referred to as “backlinks“. You will need 150+ backlinks coming into your site to get any traction on Google’s search results pages or “SERPs”. This is obviously a major undertaking and this article discusses how to approach inbound links.

You can start at Open Link Profiler. Enter your web address in the search box and this site will give you a report on who links to your site. You may be surprised who is linking to you, and you may even want to request some sites remove links to your site. Most people find they have very few links, and this is a situation you need to reverse.

The Open Link Profiler tool will list off who is linking to you, but more importantly if you search on your competitor’s pages, it will list off their links. This is valuable information as the list will contain websites and pages with high PageRank™ that you may not be aware of. These links may be free and with a little communication, you can get a quality backlinks to your site.

So, you know who is already linking to you, and you have a list of quality sites that don’t link to you but that do link to your competitors, its time to hit the phone or email and request these missing, high PageRank links.

Note that Dynamic Web Solutions can report on backlinks for you and contrast your site with one or two others in a table report. This makes it very easy to spot which links you could be going after.

What about outbound links?

Similarly, you can improve your reputation with Google by linking to quality sites – sites with high PageRank. This demonstrates that you are a good Internet citizen and are focused on your customers, not just your own interests.

Backlinks Q&A

Should I touch zero PR sites? Only if you have no links. Best left alone otherwise.

Should I pay for links? Can the site requesting payment prove that they can direct traffic to you, and not just any traffic but people ready to buy? Is their price per click lower than Google Adwords?

Timeframe. Ideally you would do linking work slowly and consistently over some months as getting too many links to fast indicates to Google an optimiser is at work. If you don’t have the time or inclination to do this work, please contact Dynamic Web Solutions as we are doing linking work all the time.

Other

Use the search box to see backlinks

Using advanced search options, you can search for websites which have linked to your website at all the major search engines.  Type the italicized, red text into the search engine, and it will give you a list of all the sites it has found that link to your site.  Of course, you have to replace www.domainname.com with your domain name!

  • Go to Google and search for link:www.domainname.com Remember, Google syndicates its search results, so there is no need to search for links to your site on any of the sites which use Google results (AOL, Netscape, Disney’s Go.com, Alexa, and iWon).
  • Go to MSN and search for link:www.domainname.com
  • Go to Yahoo! and search for link:http://www.domainname.com

Turn Google’s PageRank tool on and off in Chrome

On the right side of the Toolbar, click the wrench icon
Go to the Privacy tab > Enhanced features.
To turn on PageRank, check the box next to “PageRank” . To turn it off, uncheck it.
Click Save.